For the past five seasons the rivalry between the Miami Heat and the Boston Celtics has been the biggest storyline in the NBA. Miami got the better of the Celtics in the conference finals last postseason, after Boston clawed their way back from 3-0 down to tie the series. The Heat claimed a historic game 7 victory after Jayson Tatum’s first minute ankle injury. However, the matchup this season appears a lot simpler, Miami is without their star man Jimmy Butler and former Celtics guard Terry Rozier. In Game one Boston showed exactly why they are the best side in the Eastern Conference, they thrashed the Heat leading by as much as 34 points at the start of the fourth quarter. Jayson Tatum put together a complete performance, collecting his first career playoff triple-double. Eventually Boston ran out with a comfortable 114-94 win after Miami rallied late in the final period.
It wasn’t surprising that the Celtics started the fastest of the two sides, they quickly bounced out to a 14-0 lead and connect on five of their first six shots. The best of which was a stunning spin move and dunk on the baseline by Jaylen Brown which sparked the TD Garden into life. The Celtics had been the best first quarter side in the NBA all season and it looked as if that was not going to change in the first round. Miami did battle back and cut the lead down to five as Kevin Love made a couple of important buckets.
Love and Jaime Jaquez Jr made consecutive shots to begin the second quarter, as Love started to expose Sam Hauser in the post. Hauser had the perfect response, he nailed four consecutive 3-point efforts to open up another 12-point game. The Celtics never looked back from there and really started to roll offensively, Jayson Tatum was the catalyst he accepted the Miami Heat double teams and dished out to wide open shooters and unlike previous years everybody was knocking them down. Tatum finished the game with a superb 23-point triple-double, his first of his career.
Third quarters had consistently been the downfall of the Celtics across the last few seasons, but it seemed to change this season and this game was nothing different. Boston outscored Miami by 17 points in the period and Kristaps Porzinigis really dominated in stretches. Porzingis was brought in to help breakdown zone defensive coverages and Miami are the one team that constantly executes the zone. Porzingis did his job perfectly; he attacked the mismatches Miami provided and knocked down multiple shots from way beyond the arc. Porzingis finished the game with 18 points and four rebounds in his first ever postseason game as a Celtic.
After Al Horford put in a layup to begin the fourth quarter the Celtics led by 34 points and had run away with it. Although as we’ve seen many times before the Miami Heat do not bow down even though defeat was staring them in the face. Each season a role player seems to turn into a star for the Heat in the playoffs, maybe this year it will be Delon Wright who hit 5 consecutive 3-pointers to cut the lead down to 15 points. But after a Joe Mazzulla timeout the Celtics regrouped and executed offensively to close out a comfortable 20-point victory.
After the game Jayson Tatum spoke on ESPN about Boston’s game 1 win: “It’s supposed to be tough. In the playoffs no game is easy … there’s no guaranteed win regardless of time and score, how much time is left. We just had to respond, and we did that”. Boston will be back in the TD Garden on Wednesday night for Game two of their first-round matchup with the Heat.
By Will C
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